The Plastic Hearts subline is the brainstorm of John Picot and takes Black Tokyo in new, high-tech, cyberpunk directions. It’s a vision of this unique campaign world colored by sci-fi and cyberpunk elements- a robo-fetish present or future for Black Japan.

The Tetsujin are a race of artificially intelligent robots, originally constructed for ultra-heavy labor and the dangerous jobs that humans were unwilling to perform. Due to the need for a high functioning intelligence to carry out complex tasks, the Tetsujin were given a sophisticated neural network AI to enable them to learn from mistakes and improve task management.

The first Tetsujin rolled off the assembly line during the early 1980s, and alongside the Famicom and VCR, became one of the iconic technologies of the eighties. The Tetsujin first prototypes were comparative simpletons, with crude armatures and limited vocabularies, that still none the less cost millions of dollars. These first robots went to work in factories, mines and the fields of large, corporate owned farms, displacing human laborers. Then military models, with improved AI and more complex chassis emerged. Then, when the first POETICA hit the market, refinements to the Tetsujin operating system to make their personalities more well rounded and naturalistic emerged. Soon enough, prices fell enough that wealthy families could afford a Tetsujin gardener, chauffeur or bodyguard.

By the 1990s, Tetsujin minds were complex and agile enough the cleverest could be considered almost human. By the turn of the millennia, the same activists that were just beginning to push for POETICA and catgirl emancipation were calling for Tetsujin liberty.

The difference- the Tetsujin got their freedom, albeit with some strings attached. The POETICA and Nekomusume races are still struggling in their soft bondage. Why? Because the diversified mega-corp that created the first Tetsujin prototypes wanted it that way.